Esoteric Claims to Fame, Or: My Cousin Was a MIB

Originally posted at Trickster's Realm for Binnall of America.

An item on Lon Sticker’s Phantoms and Monsters about Elvis and his life long interest in UFOs inspired me to write about the time I met Elvis in Los Angles when I was working at the Free Clinic.  (see my post on UFO Mystic.) That was one of my brushes with fame, and esoteric in a round about way, since Elvis had a strong curiosity about UFOs and believed in extraterrestrial life.

Another esoteric brush with fame is, I think, waaaaaaaay cool. It concerns Boris Badenov. Yes, that Boris Badenov! Legend has it that the character actor Akim Tarmioff was the inspiration for the spy character Boris Badenov of the  Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  Here is what a Wikipedia entry has to say about Akim’s inspiration:

Badenov's name is a play on that of the 16th-century Russian Tsar Boris Godunov ("bad enough" vs. "good enough"). His accent and explosive temper are an homage to Hollywood actor Akim Tamiroff, especially Tamiroff's role in The Great McGinty, a 1940 movie directed by Preston Sturges.

Akim (Mikhailovich) Tamiroff, the Russian born character actor who appeared in dozens of films and television shows was often typecast as a Mexican or Greek, among other ethnic characters. He played spies, cops, thieves; all manner of roles.  Among the films Akim appeared in:For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1943, Lord Jim, 1965, Oceans 11, 1960, Topaki, 1964, and dozens more.

Akim was married to my grandfather’s niece, actress Tamara Shayne. My mother lived with them when she was in her late teens (that would be in late 1940s, early 1950s) when she first arrived in Los Angeles from Oregon.  I met them once when I was little; I remember Tamara as being stand offish , but Akim was pretty nice, very funny and playful.

Truly, how cool is it that one of the iconic cartoon characters, Boris Badenov, was based on a family member? (Another fun esoteric synchronistic fact: my mother’s name is a variation of Natasha.) 


Is it fair to say Boris was a MIB? No, it just sounded good for the title. Boris was short, fat, and hardly MIB like in behavior or appearance. He was an Eastern European/Russian spy, bumbling, the bad guy, created during the Cold War, when the spy business was everywhere. It still is; and actually, we’ve come back around to Russian spies recently, with movies like SALT and the plethora of Russian spies on television shows.

I have other claims to esoteric fame, which I'll write about in future columns.

Ida Kannenberg: Contactee, Channeler, Writer

I just saw Mike Clelland's lovely post at hidden experience (Ida Kanneberg: Lovely Contactee) on Ida Kanneberg's passing in May of this year.  She was 95.

Ida wrote several books about her experiences with channeled ETs and entities, UFO sightings, and most recently,  her contributions to My Brother is a  Hairy Man, with co-author Lee  Trippet about UFO/paranormal Bigfoot encouters.

Ida lived here in Oregon. I never did get the opportunity to meet her, though I did receive a nice eamil from her a few years ago. I have loved her books and in fact, had just finsihed reading her Project Earth a couple of weeks ago.

I always felt that Ida was a brave woman for being so open about her experiences and her philosophies.

Here's something about Ida from UFO Experiences blog:

In 1940 Ida May Kannenberg met a UFO while traveling through the desert outside Los Angeles. She was tricked into thinking her help was needed and as she thought she was giving blood they were putting implants into her body. She met some of the people she’d later be taking psychic dictation from but forgot all about them when the voices began in 1968.

Ida’s communicators are time travelers from the time of Atlantis and a being from the beginning of time on Earth (Thoth). Her closest collaborator, or “live-in companion”, was Hweig, now deceased, who was the child of a time traveler and a Russian of royal birth.

Since then, Ida has gone from nearly being driven mad by them to becoming the most organized and systematic thinker and writer on UFO and psychic events. Although Ida never takes what they tell her at face value, her experiences with them during the last 37 years have made her extremely interesting and knowledgeable. At 90 she is the Sybil and Jung of this era of UFOs and abductions by aliens.

I referenced Ida in an article on another Oregon contactee I wrote about for my Trickster's Realm column on BoA. (Psychic Communications with Aliens and UFOs: More Oregon Tales.) In writing about "Jane," a woman I met many years ago and who had her own UFO and abduction experiences in, among other places, the Gold Hill area, "Jane" refers to Ida Kanneberg:

Jane quotes Oregon UFO author Ida Kannenberg's UFOs and the Psychic Factor  to help explain her ideas about her interactions with aliens. For example, Jane refers to page 187 of Kanneberg's book, where Kannenberg points out some of the ways extraterrestrials interact with us:

Hallucinatory craft and occupants due to hypnosis of the contactees ... craft/personalities are unseen, but their presence detected. These are psychic manifestations ... remote contact by telepathy ...Ida Kannenberg

Ida Kannenberg has been in contact with alien entities since the nineteen seventies, These communications involve both aliens, as in ET, and Bigfoot. In the book My Brother is a Hairy Man,  which she co-authored with Bigfoot researcher Lee Trippet, she writes that, during a conversation with Lee in the beginning stages of the book, and Ida's potential involvement, (for she was unsure due to her unfamiliarity with the topic of Bigfoot) a psychic communication came through:

Just about there a telepathic voice broke into our discussion to give us some specific directions. I have been steadily interacting with such voices since 1977. This was a new one. He introduced himself as Maez, the head of the Council that monitors Bigfoot. From the planet Arcturus yet! That would explain the UFOs that have been seen in the vicinity of our subject.

I am grateful for Ida's willingness to share her many experiences with the rest of us; and thankfully,  her gifts continue to intrigue us, as well as inspire us, in her writings.